


Worth and Worthiness

by Catzgirl



Series: Keen and Cunning [4]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Domestic Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Military Backstory, Past Rape/Non-con, Rape/Non-con Elements, lycanthropy, ya girl is back on her bullshit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2019-04-05 00:22:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14032089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catzgirl/pseuds/Catzgirl
Summary: Caleb has a type and it shows.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I promise this has a happy ending.

The first time a boy hurts Caleb, he's fifteen in his family's barn with the tailor's son. His lips feel swollen, tingly, every inch of him that Humphrey touches chafes beneath his clothes, itches for skin-to-skin contact. He's fifteen, mostly a man, and he knows what men do in the darkness with those that they love.

He goes to his knees, fumbles with Humphrey's belt.

"Caleb," the other boy gasps, and Caleb looks up at him through the fan of his eyelashes, "You're gonna—? Oh,  _fuck_ ," he groans, leans completely against the hay bale as Caleb's lips part over the head of his cock.

It's saltier than he'd expected. The flesh thickens in his mouth as he bobs his head, imagines what he'd want a man to do to him and does it. Then it's too long, too hard, bumps against the back of his throat so that he gags on it, throat constricting so that Humphrey moans, "Oh fuck,  _yes_ ," and he likes the sound of that, doesn't he? Isn't it worth a little discomfort?

Humphrey's hands come up to his hair, card through and  _tug_  and a shiver goes down Caleb's spine, a moan rumbles out of his chest that sends reverberations straight through Humphrey's core. The tailor's son is a quick study; those hands turn from soft petting into grasping, and it’s hard and hot and heavy as Caleb swirls his tongue down the length of his boyfriend, goes to pull off for air with half a smirk.

The hands in his hair tighten.

"Caleb," Humphrey moans, "Caleb, please, just a little more," and the hands in his hair are hard and hot and heavy as Humphrey starts to thrusts into his mouth.

 _Fuck,_ he thinks, trying to breathe through his nose, trying to regain some semblance of control, of pace. Humphrey thrusts into his mouth, too deep, and his throat is seizing as he gags. He tries to make a noise but all that comes out is a strangled half-moan, and the vibrations of it spur Humphrey on.

 _Fuck_ _fuck_ _fuck_ , there's nothing for it. The only thing he can do is hold onto Humphrey's thighs and brace himself and try to breathe.

Black spots crop up in his vision and there's fire under his skin, not from excitement anymore but from  _fear_ , but he squashes it down: Humphrey is his boyfriend. He's fifteen now, he's old enough to blow his boyfriend in his family's barn. This is what he'd want someone to do for him, isn't it? Humph loves him, doesn't he? This is natural, this is what men do in the darkness with those that they love.

Black spots crop up in his vision and there's fire under his skin and if he can just  _do this_  then Humph will be so happy, so pleased with him, and that makes this bit of discomfort more than worth it.

There's no warning, when Humphrey starts to cum. He's got Caleb by the ears, tugging his face back and forth in time with his thrusts, and then he holds so that his cock is as far down Caleb's throat as it can get, and there's  _hot_  and  _thick_  and, if he's honest, a bit  _gross_. The aftertaste of it is like soured  _some_ thing, curdled and clotted as it pumps into him in streaks. He nearly chokes on it, but he's already choking on cock.

As soon as Humphrey's hands loosen he's off, scrabbling back on his knees, coughing and spitting onto the ground, rubbing his tongue against his sleeve.

"Caleb," Humphrey says, voice gone all raspy and ragged, "That was—" and he just hums for a bit. When Caleb looks, he finds his boyfriend's eyes all distant, a dopey smile on his face, one hand reaching for him.

He takes the offered hand, uses it to pull himself up so they're of a level again. Leans against Humphrey and says, "Wasn't that something?" Tries to force a voice of confidence past the ache in his throat, tries to beat back the humiliated blush. It wasn't what he'd planned, but just look at Humph gone all moon-eyed and soft for him.

"C'mere," his boyfriend tells him, and goes in for a kiss, turns at the last second to peck Caleb's cheek instead. "Don't wanna taste—you know," he says sheepishly, shrugs as if it doesn’t matter, "You alright? Got a little rough there at the end."

"No, I'm alright," Caleb says, because he's fifteen years old, for the gods' sakes. He not a little kid, he knows about the business of men and what they do in the dark. "Like it, actually," because it's true: that first tug on his hair had him half-hard in his own pants. The rest of it, the face-fucking, that's a bit  _other_. That's a bit sketchy for him, but he'd gotten through it alright all things considered.

It's worth it, he thinks, to see how gentle Humph is with him now. The other boy's fingers raise to Caleb's swollen lips, smooth against them as his mouth pinches in a worried frown, and he says, "I—hell Caleb, I don't need to tell you how much I loved it." They start out of the barn together, a careful few feet between them, just a couple mates hanging about, staying out of trouble. In his family's barn. In the middle of the day. Nothing suspicious here. "Wouldn't mind doing that again," Humphrey whispers, sneaks him a grin.

Next time will be better, Caleb thinks. He's a quick study, he'll learn from this. It won't be as bad.

* * *

 

"Where'd all these come from, Caleb?" His mother stands in the middle of his room, his book collection dragged out from beneath his bed.

He refuses to hang his head, to admit his guilt.

"From Humph," he says, "Most of 'em."

His mother frowns in that special way of hers; not the angry one of his father, all hard lines and ruddy cheeks. His mother frowns and her brow furrows, her eyes shift from sky-blue to sea, her red-brown hair cascading as she tilts her head. When his father frowns it's because Caleb is a disappointment of a son. When his mother frowns it's because she's failed Caleb in some way, must have, for him to be behaving so disastrously.

(His mother's frown is that one that hurts him. The one that makes him hang his head with shame.)

"What did da tell you about books," and she's not asking, not really.

( _The land provides for us, boy,_ were his father's exact words. That was months ago. He'd sat at the dinner table of their little shack and gripped his fork in his hand so tightly that his knuckles had gone white.

 _When a book takes root in the fields, that's when I'll accommodate this foolishness._ )

"Mum," he tries, "I  _need_  them. For my studies." Not a total truth; there's more than one book under his bed that are purely fiction, purely for his own fantasies, but his mother wouldn't know the difference. "I have to keep up my training, it'd be dangerous not to."

She is having none of his bullshit. A Widogast in every strand, in every nuance, she knows better.

"Show me roots, then," she says, "Bloom something, call the tree in," and gestures at the branches tapping against his little window.

His face burns, his fists clench, his teeth grit, "You know I can't."

They're Widogasts. These are the very basics of what he should be able to do. He has his mother's coloring, her exact temperament, he is not even his father's son in name, but her power eludes him.

There are other types of magic in the world. Magic he can only get from books. The first time he'd read a fire spell it had  _resona_ _ted_ with him, had lit something in him that still burns. That had been early in life but he remembers it as though it were yesterday, which isn't a feat because he remembers every moment of his existence, but he thinks he'd remember this no matter what.

They have an earthen floor in every room of their house, of their shack, and the patch beneath his mother blooms in an array of reds and oranges and yellows, and he isn't sure if it's because she's so angry with him or because she knows  _exactly_ what he's on about. She points to the candle at his windowsill and says, "Light it."

"Mum—"

"Caleb Widogast, you light that candle right now."

He groans, rolls his eyes, doesn't even look at the mentioned wick, just points a finger in its general direction. Flames live and lurk under his skin—he loosens up his grip on the control that rules every waking moment and lets fire crawl down his arm, shooting out in a tiny, controlled burst, and the only thing he struggles with is containing his smirk of satisfaction as his mother nods her approval.

"Look at you," she says, "Lit a candle from 'cross the room on instinct." She turns back to his bed, sweeps the books into his box. Sets it on the floor with care, "You've got a gift, alright," and chews at her bottom lip. The flowers under her feet curl, unfurl, become night blossoms that will light the room in blues and greens, "Just not the one I wanted."

It's not what he wanted to hear. His own frown pulls at the corners of his mouth, his ears burning, but he's fifteen. He won't hang his head just because he isn't a druid like his mother.

"Still," she says, thumps her foot gently against the box, "There's Widogast in you, yet. Wouldn't be so powerful without the blood." It is the best compliment she can pay him. In their family, these words are worth his weight in gold. "Might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb," and she uses her foot to tuck the box into the dark corner under his bed, "Let's just keep it from da, yeah?"

There are lines at the corners of his mother's eyes.  _Laugh lines_  his father used to say, back when there was laughter in the house.

 _No_ , his mother would reply, and her eyes would turn to the window, as if she could see all the way across the fields and into the heart of the forest beyond,  _Crows feet_.

Caleb hugs his mother, makes promises he's not sure he can keep.

* * *

 

The second boy that hurts him is Bernard. Bernard took an apprenticeship with the blacksmith a few years back, but it didn't work out: he's all brute strength with none of the careful finesse of a sword-shaper, of a shield-maker. Now he's for hire as a bodyguard, works some security details at local festivals, runs escorts to other villages.

Caleb's never been away from home before. His family are tied to the land and his mother to their forest—as if any old forest wouldn't do—so he's been almost completely bereft of  _companionship_  since Humphrey up and married on him.

(They see each other sometimes, still. He's a Widogast and the land provides for him, but he makes excuses to go see the tailor. In the back fitting room of the shop they'd done more than just fool around like when they were kids, all soft touches and declarations. And then the engagement came and Humphrey had been rough with him, hot and heavy and hard the way that Caleb likes, and then there'd been the wedding.

 _I'm a good man_ , he'd said,  _I can't keep carrying on with you_ , and Caleb had been in his bed, kneeling before him, tying the tie Humphrey would wear before the alter in the morning,  _It's_ _not right,_  and that had been against Caleb's lips. The last words of the night.

The tailor had passed earlier that year, and the marriage had been to the daughter of the cobbler a village over. Joined their businesses, cemented the future of Humphrey's family.

Caleb still feels the sting in his heart over it. It hadn't always been good for him, but it'd been worth it.)

Bernard has no family to arrange a marriage for him. Bernard is beholden to absolutely no one but himself, walks through town with his head held high and doesn't apologize for anything he does or says. Caleb feels stronger beside him; he knows what they look like: Bernard of Zemnia and Caleb Widogast. Bernard is a clear threat with his muscles and bulk and grin that borders on feral. Caleb's got fire under his skin, sets the bonfires at the festivals with flourishing fingers and shoots fireworks into the sky without a sweat, with hardly a reach into his reserve of power; he's every bit the threat his boyfriend is, but without all the brass and bravado—and with many, many more books.

Caleb could burn a man from the inside-out with half a thought. He doesn't need to posture in the streets to know his own worth.

"Shit," he hisses, because it burns and not in the pleasant way that his own fire does.

They've forgotten to pull back the wool cover so his knees scrape against it as Bernard pushes him forward.

"Give me a minute," he murmurs, reaching for the corner of the spread.

An unseen hand slaps his away before returning to tug at Caleb's pants, slipping them and his undershorts down, pressing his lower back until he shimmies out of them completely.

"Need you," Bernard pants behind him, "Can't wait," and he's like this sometimes after a hard fight. Hard and hot and heavy, the way Caleb likes it.

( _I'm not made of glass,_ he'd had to say in the beginning,  _I'm just as capable of killing as you are. I'm just as strong_.

Bernard had wrapped his huge hands around Caleb's throat, sent trills of warring fear and desire through him, rasped,  _You_ _really think that, don't you?_  His eyes, so black as to make the pupil near invisible, bore into Caleb's with the focus of a predator on prey.

Caleb has fire under his skin. The earliest lessons he'd had in life involved keeping it contained, involved keeping from burning the house down every time he sneezed. It's nice to be out of control, sometimes. It's nice to be the one at someone's mercy.)

" _Mein_ _Bär_ ," he croons, because even with his blonde hair and pale coloring, Bernard's pure hulk lends him the appearance of a bear—one of the northern ones that roam the ice fields, white and aggressive and with an easy aversion for even their own kind. That's how Bernard is, for everyone but Caleb. Caleb alone calms him, composes him into a state of complacency, and if it makes Caleb cocksure that he not only has fire under his skin but in the touch of his bare hand to his bear, well. It's worth a little discomfort, surely.

"Need you," Bernard repeats, and there's a wet  _slurp_  as he licks his own hand, then spits into it. A long groan, and Caleb knows  _exactly_  what that means, knows that if he braces himself it'll only hurt worse.

He's always like this after a hard fight. The local cleric has already been by to heal him up, but there's still rips to be mended in Bernard's shirt, there's still dents in his armor. Caleb should be flattered, he tells himself, that this is what his boyfriend needs to pull himself out of the battle-rage, out of the violence and vitriol of a hard fight.

Arching his back, Caleb moan, "You have me, love, you have me." His knees will be fine. He can set his selfishness aside for a few minutes.

Bernard thrusts into him, hard and hot and heavy, and Caleb can already feel himself tearing at the minimal amount of lube. He should have stretched himself earlier today, he thinks, he knows how Bernard gets after a hard fight. He should have been prepared.

The hands on his hips are bruising in their intensity, and that's what he focuses on because that's the part he likes the best.

(" _You really think that, don't you?_ It's nice to be the one at someone's mercy, sometimes.  _Show me_ , Bernard had said that first time, dripping with challenge and threat and arousal,  _Show_ _me how strong you are._ He's seventeen now, he's a man in his own right, and if anyone looks at the leanness to him and sees weakness?

Well, that's their problem.)

His knees scrape against the hard wool of their bed cover, and he can feel himself tearing as Bernard fucks into him, ruts into him. One huge hand travels up Caleb's spine and he arches, concentrating only on the purple-blue pressing into his hips, knows better than to rock out of reach.

If they can just get this over with, they can cuddle and sleep and try again later, do better later. Bernard just needs to work off the excess is all. That's worth a little discomfort.

A huge hand travels up Caleb's arched spine, comes to a rest at the base of his neck and easily wraps around,  _squeezes_. It's something he likes, usually, but he's already torn and bleeding, he's already abraded his knees and elbows.

The line between pleasure and pain has always been blurry for him, but this crosses it.

" _Mein_ _Bär_ _,_ " he tries to say, but all that comes out is a croak. "Bernard," he tries, to the same effect, which is none.

" _Ja_ ," Bernard grunts behind him, squeezing so that Caleb can't breathe, the way he usually likes, "Oh, fuck,  _ja,_ _mein_ _hund_ _,_ _mein_ _guter_ _hund_ ," and he's close if the sound of his voice is any indication. If Caleb can just wait a moment, can just set his selfishness aside for a fucking moment, they can be done with this.

His vision is going fuzzy around the edges.  _Fuck_ _fuck_ _fuck_ , this is not exactly what he'd had planned, this is not exactly ideal. He chokes on a gasp, rocks his hips in time with Bernard's, reaches between his legs in an awkward attempt at fondling Bernard's heavy balls, at getting this over with.

The struggle of it is what pushs his lover over the edge. Bernard spews a steady stream of filth into his ear, a mix of Zemnian and Common, praises and insults in equal measures as he unloads directly into Caleb's ass.

When he withdraws, it's with a swear.

"Fuck, Caleb, why didn't you say something?" Caleb eases onto his stomach, turns his head so he can give a smirk, shaky though it might be. There's wet on the backs of his thighs and he doesn't need to look to know the exact shade of pink Bernard's spend will be tinted.

"Come here," he says around the lump in his throat. He will not cry—it hardly hurts, after all, he's a fucking Widogast for all the gods' sakes, he's seventeen years old and he will not cry over something he  _asked_  for. He should have spent the afternoon stretching himself, should have had the lube ready next to the bed. He's a quick study and this is just another lesson. "I need you, come here my big Bear."

Bernard's eyes are black, predatory, unsettling in his pale face with his white-blonde hair. He grunts in agreement, lays down and gestures for Caleb to curl up onto his chest.

All that muscle, all that power. Caleb knows he's still bleeding, knows he should go get one of the healing potions that they keep for just this sort of thing. But these are the moments that make the rest worth it. He can't afford to squander it.

* * *

 

"Caleb," and his mother's voice is quiet but firm, "What did he do to you?"

They're sitting at the kitchen table—rickety and rubbish as it is—and Caleb holds one of her hands as she sits still, far away in her familiar's eyes. His other hand turns the pages of his book, so he almost misses her question.

"What do you mean?" She's a Widogast, so there's no telling how much of it she knows, how much the very earth has whispered in her ear. He's not going to volunteer any information. He shuts his book and turns his attention to her fully.

The crows feet at the corners of her eyes are as deep as her frown. To the outside world his father seems to run their house as he runs their land; more fool to those who make assumptions. His mother is a Widogast through-and-through. Her hand rests on top of his, and her eyes don't leave his as she turns his wrist over, as she pulls up his sleeve and bares the bruises there.

He's always been lean. Each bruise encompasses the total circumference of his arm, distinctly hand shaped.

"Mum," he says, "It's not what you think," and it shouldn't be. There was once a time when he could have said it without the fear in his voice, without the panic.

That's a long time ago, though, or it feels like it.

"Caleb," she says, and she doesn’t have to raise her voice to make him understand how serious she is, "No one touches my son like that."

Because she knows, of course. He wonders what he's done to tip her off. Is it the limp that's growing worse? Bernard drinks their money away these days, there's less and less to spend on potions to heal Caleb after those hard-fight-fucks. He'd asked not to be treated like glass, he'd challenged his Bear to treat him as an equal in strength, and he  _is_  damnit. Bernard used to leave bruises on him that he'd kiss, that he'd worship, that Caleb thrilled to find later or feel under the layers of his clothes, like a secret, like he was carrying  _them_  around under his clothes.

Now Bernard leaves bruises that have nothing to do with love or lust, that have everything to do with a decline in security details. The area is too safe—the front line is far from their little village, and most of the local bandits have headed off to the violence and relative lawlessness of the war. There's no outlet for his big Bear's inherent rage, his inherent power, and if Caleb needs to flicker sparks between his fingers to keep his temperature down how is Bernard's pent up energy any different?

It's worth it, he thinks. The sweet moments are fewer and farther between than they once were, but they make everything worth it.

"Mum," he says, and his traitorous eyes water despite it all, "I don't know what to do."

He's eighteen now. He lights the festival bonfires and makes a decent living burning crop residues and extinguishing any village fires. The land provides for his mother and father so he doesn't have to, so that he can live in his and Bernard's little cottage and keep their own peace.

"I want to come home," he says, "But Bernard would-"

"You let me worry about him," his mother says. Her eyes are the same blue-gray as his. Plants curl into the nearby open window and a lily unfurls against his face, a blossom of wild and impossible colors. The grin it brings to his lips is watery, uncertain. He's eighteen, he shouldn't need his mother to settle his scores for him.

"No," he says, "I'll—I'll do it."

(He has so many books in that little cottage. Shelves and shelves of them, in every room, on every wall. Some of them for his studies, for his magic, because it's  _still_  growing and because he's always ravenous for more. His memory is word-perfect and lifelong, but he still loves to reread them during the hard times, when there's no money for potions so never mind the books.

The books are what he'll miss, he thinks, and that's a godsdamn shame. He'd loved Bernard. He loves Bernard.

But his mother is holding his bruised arm in her hands and frowning. Her familiar has shown her something to make her ask these things. Lilies are blooming from the window, petals wipe away his tears. There's nothing more to be done.)

"I'll join the army," he says as if in a fog, and his mother nods.

"You're a Widogast," she says, "You've the talent, the gift. Not how I expected. Not how I hoped, but still." Her eyes turn to the window her plants are creeping through, a small magic, for her comfort as much as his. All they can see from here is the fence that denotes their little yard, the fields beyond that his father is working, and then small dots in the distance of the village. Caleb knows better. His mother can see the forest from here. "For you," she says, "Any would do," and they're not talking about lovers anymore. They're not talking about armies or getting out of this town.

He packs his things while Bernard is at the tavern. He slips out without a note, without a warning, without any of his beloved books. A crow follows him for a while, until he reaches the tree line. It perches and caws softly into the night; a goodbye and a farewell.

"Mum," he says as a path begins to open before him. He doesn't say that he loves her. The crow cocks his head at Caleb, titters and squints at him. In his eyes, Caleb can see the auburn of his mother's braid, the blue-grey of her eyes, the crows feet from when there was laughter in the house, from before Caleb's magic manifested and his father realized there would be no heir for his legacy. He is his mother's spitting image and though there have never been plants springing from his touch, he's  _her_  son first and foremost.

( _Widogasts_ _are forest people_ , she'd whispered to him when he was a boy, her crow perched on her shoulder.  _Our line stretches back as far as the trees_ , and at that age the trees had seemed endless, seemed to touch the very sky.

 _Your father doesn't understand_ , and he'd already known that. From the first spark of his fingers his father had chilled, had withdrawn.  _He thought you'd be his_ _instead_ , because his father works the land and always has, always will, and he'd wanted a son to follow behind him.

But Caleb is not his father's son. He's a Widogast.)

He doesn't tell her he loves her because she already knows. The forest opens before him because she wills it, because they are forest people, they are wood guests.

He does not look back.

* * *

 

He's nineteen when he gets the letter. Bunches it up in his hand, smooths it back out, reads it again as if there will be any more answers.

 _Your father is gone_ , but no mention of how, as if the how of it is inconsequential,  _I go to the forest_ , and no mention of which because it's not as if any old one will do, _Remember who you are_ , and there is nothing in his life that he can forget but this is something he'd remember no matter what.

Some gold had some with it. No doubt that she's sold the land for some paltry pittance. He's been sending home his soldier's pay for two years, and he has no idea what his mother has done with it. Supposes that it doesn't really matter.

The letter creases in his hand, crackles as he balls it up. Makes himself release it, smooth it out.

"What's all that, then?"

Caleb jerks to alertness, blinks more than once, says, "Hm? Nothing, nothing, just a letter from home," and pitches it into the fire. Maybe if he burns it, he reasons, it'll be less true.

It's not often that they get a night in the barracks. The war is getting more intense, they're out fighting nearly every day, but his and Jensen's unit have been waiting in the barracks all week as their new commander travels out to meet them.

Jensen closes the door shut softly behind him, edges closer with a kind smile. "All good news, eh?"

Caleb's lips quirk at the corners. He's twenty years old now, and he's seen some shit. His memory stretches as far back as he does, which had always seemed like a blessing, but the longer he's alive the more it wears on him. Jensen makes it an easier burden to bear, for the most part.

(No more bruises, at least. That's right out no matter how much he begs for it. Jensen will consent to some light scratching, to some hair pulling, but nothing further.

He misses it, if he's honest, feeling like he's at someone else's mercy, especially these days when it's so often the opposite. But it's nice in its own way, too, after the violence of Bernard, after the secrecy and shame of Humphrey.

There are other boys, other faces in the stretch of his memory, but these are the ones that count.)

" _Ja_ ," he says as the letter burns, "Yes. All good news," and it's not totally a lie. His mother has gone to the forest, where she belongs. How could that ever be a bad thing?

His father being gone is a passing concern. From the moment that Caleb's magic manifested he stopped being his father's son. There's not much more to say about it.

Jensen sits on the bed next to him, reaches up to massage at Caleb's shoulders. "Why so tense, Widogast?" His hands are firm as they work out the kinks, and Caleb leans into the touch.

"We leave tomorrow," he answers, because it's not totally a lie. He's seen some shit, and that's hard on a man that can't forget. He's doing the right thing, he's fighting for his empire, but the faces that flash through his memory didn't seem to think so.

He's only twenty, but he's getting too old for this shit.

Jensen leans forward until his breath tickles Caleb's ear, "You're right," he says, "Better make the best of tonight, then," and nips the lobe.

Caleb shrugs him off. "Robert," he says, "I'm not in the mood."

Jensen starts to massage his shoulders again, easy in his affection, affable in his mood, says, "So testy," kisses the skin between his shoulder blades, "So tense," and his thumbs dip lower, trailing either side of Caleb's spine, "Come on, Widogast, it's our last night in a bed."

His mother has gone into the forest. It's different for druids. Her husband is gone and her son is in the army: she's gone into the forest and she will not return. He has to blink very quickly indeed, has to push back the wave of guilt that washes over him.

"Robert," he repeats, in a voice as weary as he feels, "What did I just say?"

Jensen's hands rove to the front of his chest, tweak at his nipples, scratch lightly down the flat planes of him. Caleb can feel the length of him growing, pressed against his back, can feel the uptick in his boyfriend's breaths. His own cock, gods be damn, is stirring under the careful ministrations, and Jensen notices, purrs with his teeth and tongue on Caleb's neck, "See? Come on, Wido, come on Caleb," and it  _does_  send a rush through him to hear his first name on Jensen's lips, "I know you want it. Don't I always make it good for you?"

There's no denying that's true. And anyways, Jensen will just keep on until he gets what he wants. Caleb groans and falls back, lets Jensen slide between his legs with a triumphant grin, lube already in hand. He throws an arm over his face so Jensen won't see how the corners of his lips pull down into a frown, so that he doesn't have to see his own traitorous body harden and twitch into Jensen's hand.

It's not violent, like Bernard had been. Jensen just keeps up asking until Caleb's too tired to refuse, and that's not the same as not asking at all. They're dating, Caleb tells himself, they're in  _love_  for the gods' sakes. If a little discomfort is the price he pays for all of Jensen's warmth, his surety, his gentleness? Well, it's worth it.

Jensen stretches him carefully: one finger, then two. There's none of the burn, none of the pleasure-into-pain, but there also none of the risk. When Jensen slides into him with a low moan, biting his fist to keep the men in the next room from complaining, it's good. It's fine. His cock is hard and leaking against himself, so he must be enjoying it on some level.

But his father is gone and he doesn't know how or why, only that it's final. His mother has sold their little shack, their home, and all the land that provided for them, and she's gone into the forest with her familiar to die. It's what druids do when their time is up.

(Would he know her, he wonders as Jensen throws each of Caleb's ankles over his shoulders, would he know the tree she's become? His mother has always been flowery, a blossom of fantastical shapes and colors in an otherwise mundane world. What tree could hope to match her?)

"Widogast," Jensen rasps at him, "Look at me, love," so he carefully arranges his face, screws his eyes closed and concentrates on his building orgasm.

"Yes," he groans, "Jensen, yes, more," he says, because he knows his boyfriend loves to hear how well he's doing, because that's what it takes for this to be over quicker. Jensen places a kiss at his calf, at the back of his knee, and he should be enjoying this. His body certainly is, he's gone all sweaty and tight with the release that wants to tear through him.

In his mind he's miles away in a nameless little village, holding his mother's hand as she flies through her familiar's eyes and he flicks through a book. He's riding his father's shoulders in the afternoon heat as he points out each type of crop, what resources they bring to their family, showing Caleb how the land provides for them almost as much as his mother does.

(Oh, how her eyes would crinkle under his father's praise. Where had all that laughter gone? He remembers his father's broad smile and the lines it wore in his face. He remembers crows feet at the corners of his mother's eyes back when her crow still lived with them.

 _He's a_ _Widogast_ _, through and through_ , his father had said the first time flames had sparked at his fingers.

 _We could try again,_ and that's his mother's voice, calm and consonance as she covered his hands with hers.  _I can give you a son_. Not "another" one. The moment magic had flickered in him, he'd ceased to be his father's son. He'd become a Widogast.

There had been no siblings for him. His father had never recovered.  _The land provides for us_  he'd intoned,  _and the lands have seen fit that your mother should have a child but that I should not_. Caleb had been ten years old and devastated.

And now both of his parents are gone.)

"Jensen," he pants, because he's sweat slicked and puddling precum on himself, "Jensen, please," and the words are true even if the tone is misleading.

It works as intended, because that's how clever he is. Jensen pumps into him once, twice, thrice more before stilling with a moan muffled against Caleb's leg. His hand comes forward and jacks Caleb off in quick, efficient motions that have his dripping cock spurting with barely a full stroke.

Then Jensen collapses forward onto him, all hot breath and thundering heart. Caleb wiggles under him, reaching for the rag at the bedside table, coming up just short. "Jensen," he says, "Robert. I need to clean us up."

The other man moves for that. Flips over onto his back to bare the space that Caleb's cum has crusted to him. Caleb sits up, gets the water skein and the rag, makes short work of the both of them.

"Mmm," Jensen purrs in a voice that's thoroughly exhausted, "Thanks, love. Now come here," and he pulls Caleb over by the waist, curls up with him in the middle of their shared bed.

It's not violent. And he did, technically, say yes. 

These are the things he reminds himself of as his boyfriend slips off to sleep. Bernard had bruised him and not usually in the ways that Caleb likes. He can admit now that the relationship got away from him at the end, there. That he still would have stayed, would have played mind games with himself to justify Bernard's abuse as he had with Humphrey's secrecy.

There are other faces, other boys in his memory but these are the one that count. His eyes find the fire where he's burned his mother's last letter, throws up a little prayer though he knows that no one's listening.

There are no gods for one such as him. Widogasts have only the forest and the land and their circle. His mother's line had stretched unbroken for longer than the trees are tall, and yet he has none of her talent with plants and flowers. When he dies it will be as a man, as a wizard, because that's the shape the magic has taken in his veins.

( _He's a_ _Widogast_ _,_  his mother had said,  _He's too powerful to be anything else. But you've muddied him,_ and that had been the day laughter left their house,  _There's nothing of the gift in him, only fire._

Not his father's son, not quite his mother's.

Only one of them had ever reached out to Caleb again, only one bridge had been mended, but he remembers the accusation in his mother's voice, the anger and resentment.)

He has nothing his name should promise him. He has made his own way in the world, to dubious effect. Caleb curls around his boyfriend, who will not bruise his body or hide their love, who says  _please_  until Caleb says  _yes_. 

Jensen is the third boy that hurts him, but his mother isn't here to get him out this time.

* * *

 

"Looks like shit," one of them says, and Caleb can't be bothered to open an eye and see which of them it is. He sits in the back of the wagon—prime real estate back here, sitting room only— and stretches his feet out in front of him, cradles the wounded arm to his chest, a clear offer for any passing cleric or paladin to heal him.

"Yeah, Widogast," and that's fucking Ashdown he knows just by the annoyance that spears through him, "Didja burn 'em up after? Must've been pretty tough to even  _get_ to you," because he's the wizard and he sticks to the back of the formation, lops fireballs over the heads with deadly precision.

"Shut up," he says, "I don't feel like talking to you," and they laugh because that's a constant refrain from him. He saves their necks all damn day long, he's due a little peace, but does he ever get it?

It'd been something huge and hairy, all claws and teeth. He hadn't been able to tell exactly, as it had come barreling out of the night at him. All it got, whatever it had been, was a bite to the arm that he threw up in instinctive defense. Bit him right down to the bone, had not let him go as fire had raced down that same arm and into the core of it.

"He lit it up like a harvest bonfire," and that's Godfrey taking the seat at Caleb's side, "Saw it happen. Real monstery-looking fucker, that one." Always good for a decent drink and a better story, Godfrey. He takes the brunt of the attention of Caleb, runs through a play-by-play of his own engagement with the enemy forces, how he'd turned when Caleb had screamed, caught only the tail end as a huge monster lit from within the red-and-orange of Caleb's flames and exploded into ash. "Whatever the fucking scum have cooked up for us," he finishes, and Caleb has almost managed to nod off to sleep except for the sudden congratulatory pounding on his back, "It's nothing for ol' Widogast!"

"I will kill you, Godfrey, if you wake me up again," and they all set to another round of laughter. He peeks one eye open, sneaks a glance at them all. 

A shit fight. That's what'd it'd been. An absolute shit of a fight, but they'd all returned in one piece. As he peers around he notes who's gone pale with blood loss or with battle-shock, who's in good spirits and who trembles with latent energy. When the cleric's face appears at the opening of the wagon, he waves her on to the others with a nod.

Jensen can bandage his arm when they're bedded down for the night. They're already almost back to camp, further away than it was yesterday but not as far as it'll be tomorrow. They're pushing the front-line forwards, day by day. They're winning.

"What about after the war?" The bandages around his arm are already stained a faint red where the bite is. Someone can look at it tomorrow, Caleb's not doing anything outside his bed until bugle call in the morning.

"What do you mean?" And Jensen's hair is in his eyes as he shucks his armor off, as he swipes a washcloth over his neck and face and the bloody bits of his hands.

Caleb would kill for a good bath. Just, gods above, dunk him in a river and he promises not to complain. "After the war's over," he says, "Where does that leave us?"

Jensen looks over at him with eyes that are twinkling with energy still. His warrior seems to soak in blood and battle and baying and turn it into something righteous, seems to be reinvigorated by it. "Us as in you and me? Or us as in the unit?"

He leaves the washcloth in the basin, chooses a fresh one and washes Caleb's face for him, then his hands, tuts, "Don't get the bandage wet," as if he needs to reminder.

"Us," Caleb answers, bites his bottom lip as his brow furrows, "Both," because these people are his friends, he thinks. They're as close to friends as he's ever had, anyway.

He's twenty-one and he feels every minute of it. Remembers every inch of it.

War has been hell but these men he's surrounded himself with make it easier to bear, especially the man currently taking his face between his hands, kissing him soundly. He's tired beyond exhaustion and his arm still hasn't clotted, but he returns the kiss as best he can.

"Well I suppose that depends, doesn't it?" Jensen rests his forehead on Caleb's, thumbs smoothing over the furrow of Caleb's brow, "Depends on how the war ends."

Caleb kisses him. Tries to communicate with it how tired he is but that he's willing to try, to seize this moment of peace and make something with it. Jensen gets the hint, stands between Caleb's legs and doesn't break their kiss as he fumbles with the fly of Caleb's pants. 

"My arm," he says, "I can't, um, that is, the positioning I'm afraid. If _you_ could—" and oh, gods above, they've been together almost two years, so why is it so hard to ask for this?

Jensen pulls back, uncertainty in his face, says, "Do you want to be on your back? Been a while since we did it that way."

That would be because it's easier for Caleb to hide his expressions when he's face down. It's not that he doesn't enjoy sex, it's that he's only twenty-one but he's lost his family, he's lost his fair share of friends, and the face of every single person that he's ever killed floats through his head at night. Jensen's cock is nearly always hard, Jensen would  _live_  inside of Caleb if he had his way, and it'd be nice to be on the giving end every once in a while, is all.

"I thought maybe," and he licks his lips, "You could be on  _your_ back."

It takes a moment. Just a moment before the understanding lights in Jensen's eyes, followed quickly by a recoil. His boyfriend's face goes ruddy and his eyes shutter. "Well," he says, and his voice is almost nervous, "That's really, er, _your_ thing, isn't it?"

 _Here we go_ , Caleb thinks, because the day-in day-out fighting of warfare isn't enough for them, they have to be at war in their personal tent too. "What exactly do you mean by that?"

"Widogast," Jensen groans and turns away, the muscles of his broad back flexing so that Caleb can track the irritation as it moves through him, "Don't start with that shit. You know what I mean."

Almost two years, and Caleb's never been inside him. He knows how this argument goes, but he presses anyways, "No, please, I would not mind an elucidation. What exactly about the idea of being in my position is so discomforting to you?" He's lost the art of intonation over the past few years. He'd thought that Bernard had beat it out of him, but now he thinks that maybe it was just life in general. Every moment of his life stretches behind him in a never-ending loop, and that wears on a man, would turn anyone's voice to a flat deadpan.

"It's just," and Jensen turns, eyes flashing, "It's gross. I don't want- I don't want anything  _in_  me. It's unnatural."

Caleb cradles his injured arm to his chest, narrows his eyes, enunciates every syllable of the word "unnatural" in a voice that he knows is his flattest, his least impressed. "And yet," he says, "You seem perfectly content—"

"I'm not having this argument right now," Jensen snaps over him, "Why are we even fighting? Don't I always make it good for you? I'm not even in the red right now," because that's what Jensen calls it on the nights when he reaches his pleasure and Caleb doesn't—can't.

"I'm not your little play thing," he says. There's fire in his veins and sometimes in his attitude. He's every bit the warrior, the killer, the man that Jensen is, "I'm not just a fuck toy—" and Jensen cuts him off with a slap across his face.

Utter silence. It takes a long time for him to turn his head, to meet Jensen's gaze again, to raise his uninjured arm to touch the stinging bit of his cheek. Jensen stands in front of him, panting and ruddy and snarling, "Don't ever talk to me like that," eyes flashing with the violence Caleb would have expected if he were half as clever as he thought, "Don't you ever talk to me like that again."

Then Caleb's eyes water and all the fight goes out of him.

"Oh, Widogast," Jensen croons at him, "Oh hell, Caleb," and there's the surge of affection that follows his first name, "Why'd you make me do that? Why'd you say something so stupid?" It's true, every word of it. Caleb hadn't wanted to fuck tonight and pissing Jensen off had been his method of getting what he wants. It'd been manipulative and unfair and, if he's honest, he could have seen how it would end if he'd stopped to think.

"I'm sorry," Caleb mutters through his tears, "I don't—I don't know what came over me, why I said that," but he does and it's that he's tired of being treated like a stand in, like a mobile gloryhole. He craves the intimacy, the closeness, of being on top and inside of the man he loves.

But that's not the type of relationship that he's in, and his mother isn't around to get him out this time. Caleb made this bed and he needs to get used to lying in it.

"Shh," Jensen says, crawling into the bed and pulling Caleb with him, "Just rest, get your strength back. We'll see about a healer tomorrow for that arm. We'll both feel better by morning."

 

As it happens, Caleb does  _not_  feel better by morning. If anything, he feel  _significantly_  worse, he feels like he ran laps in his sleep, like his brain was working even while his body was at rest.

Jensen fetches the nearest healer, not a cleric or a paladin but a harried woman who takes one look at his arm and dumps a healing potion into his mouth. She stays just long enough to watch the wound stitch itself back together, then rushes out with an order not to overtire himself over the next twenty-four hours.

He glances at Jensen out the side of his eye and snorts.  _Not bloody likely._

Then it's business as usual: they're a few hours by wagon back to the front of the lines. Godfrey and Ashdown and Rolfe and Cooper and Webb and all the usual suspects, the closest things Caleb has to friends—

(They hear him at night, pleading with Jensen to leave off for the evening, to let Caleb rest, to leave him alone. They hear Jensen cover his mouth with one hand, stretch him open with the other. They hear Caleb crying, hear him faking moans, hear him just trying to get through it and none of them have once intervened. None of them have even once asked if he's okay beyond the wounds he accrues.

They're the closest things he's got to friends, and the humiliation of it burns in him more than his own fire ever has.

It's never been violent, not until last night, and that was the line he was hoping they wouldn't let Jensen cross. Not a one of them will meet his eye for more than a moment, and if that isn't damning then he doesn’t know what is.)

And they're back to the front lines for the good old Dwendalian Empire. All of them are men who volunteered for the front, all of them are men with nothing to lose, all of them are killers of the highest order. Who cares if Caleb's boyfriend fucks him through his no's? They're at war. It's every man for himself out here.And besides, it hadn't been violent until last night. He's got a reputation for himself, he's the best magic-user in their unit, if he really didn't want it he'd just roast Jensen to bits, right?

His arm still feels like shit, and he feels like shit, and the healing potion has done nothing for his memory of the stinging in his cheek. Jensen is wound up, too, sits shoulder-to-shoulder with Caleb and doesn't look at him.

"Rebel outpost," he says, voice clipped and curt, and is that how it's going to be? Because two can play at that game. "We get in, leave the women and children unless they're armed, get the fuck back out."

There's more planning, a crude map someone's sketched of the general layout to the village that they point at, marking paths and deciding on subunits and leaders. Caleb pays them no mind, stares out the back of the wagon at the passing scenery until Rolfe kicks at one of his boots and says, "Alright there, Widogast?"

(They all heard last night. They head the slap against his face and they heard him crying afterwards and they heard his apologies.

Jensen was supposed to be different from Bernard, was supposed to be more open than Humphrey.

What the fuck sort of man is Caleb that he keeps dating this type of man? That he chooses the same soul in separate skins?)

"Yeah," he says, "Fucking arm hurts is all," and he bares it so that they can all see the blood still caked against it, "Just healed up this morning."

Rolfe nods but eyes the point of contact between his shoulder and Jensen. Says nothing because they're the closest he's got to friends, but they're not family by any stretch of the word. It isn't their business, what men do in the darkness.

"We ready or what?" Cooper, already half out the wagon as it slows to a stop. He ducks his head out and heads off without waiting for a response.

Caleb's boots hit the ground just a moment before Jensen shoulders past him. His boyfriend winks, a clear question of  _Truce_? And he lets his lips quirk in response, because what the fuck else is there for him to do? He's made his bed and it's about time he got used to lying in it. It's never been violent until last night, and didn't he prompt? Isn't it usually gentle and careful and, for all the gods above, Jensen won't even choke him during sex. His soldier is not what his Bear had been. How could he even compare them?

His lips quirk upwards and Jensen breaks into a smile and they're on separate subgroups so that's the last they'll see of each other until the mission ends.

Here's the strange part: his memory goes all fuzzy from there.

He remembers disembarking. He remembers the rebels being ready, that armed men had rushed them before they'd breached the rubbish little defenses they'd mounted. He remembers how the fire blazed through his uninjured arm, how the one that had been bitten throbbed with an unnatural ache. He remembers the village women stepping into the places of their men once they'd been felled, remembers marking their bravery even as he and his unit cut them down.

Caleb remembers that the battle raged for hours and hours, that when night fell his flames were warring with the full moon for dominance as the village burned. Pain, worse than any wound, worse than any poison or spell or blade, ripping him open from tip to toe. A howl that split the night and sent him running, running, running for his life and tearing through the bodies blocking his way.

 _Monster_  they scream,  _It's_ _a fucking monster, run, go!_ and then other voices, just as urgent,  _please,_ and,  _no!_ , and  _all the gods above, stop!_ on the tail-end of a curdling scream. It's all too-loud and too-much and none of it makes any sense, so he rips through the bodies blocking his way and disappears into the forest.

He's a Widogast. The land provides what he needs and the forest has always offered shelter to his people.

When he wakes with the dawn—muscle memory, at this point—he finds himself soaked through with blood and gore but otherwise unharmed. One look at the sky through the tree canopy and he knows exactly where he is and it's—he's  _miles_  from the village they attacked last night.

Caleb rises to all fours, shaking in every limb, and promptly begins to vomit.

Blood. Buckets and buckets of blood, as much as what coats him if not more. Blood and—meat?

"Mum," he croaks, kneeling in a puddle of his own vomit, in a puddle of blood and gore and scraps of  _cloth_ , "Mum, what's happening?"

He's a Widogast. The forest has always offered shelter to his people.

( _He's no son of mine_  his father had said when he was ten years old and too young to understand.  _He's a_ _Widogast_ _through and through_ , and just look at him now.)

"Oh, gods above," he moans, though none of them are listening. There are no gods for one such as he, there's no patron or god for what he's become, and the forest has always offered his people shelter but the woods are not the place to get answers.

He doesn't need them. He knows exactly what's happened, what he's done.

"No," he rasps, throat raw from the vomit and the howling, from the shards of bone that went down in the hours past, "No, no no no no no," and he scrambles away from his puddle of puke because it's not  _meat_  he's chucked up. Or it is, but not the kind that belongs in a stomach.

"No," he sobs, because he's already fucked up so much of his life. He has already spent so much time regretting his choices but he didn't choose this, godsdamnit, he doesn't even  _want_  to fight in this stupid fucking war.

"Mum," he cries, "Mum, help," because his mother went into the forest and never returned, and he's a long ways from home but maybe it won't matter.

He's a Widogast. He's got nothing of his mother's talent and he isn't his father's son, but the name has to count for  _some_ thing.

( _We_ _are forest people_  his mother had told him,  _our line stretches back as far as the trees_ , and when he did stop looking up? When did he stop seeing the trees as the people they once were instead of fodder, tinder for the war effort?)

"I forgot," says, the salt of his own tears sharp on his tongue, "I forgot the way home," and is that it? He's never been a Widogast, he's never had anything but fire under his skin, but these past few years especially.

( _The land provides for us_ his father had explained, back when his father was in the habit of explaining things. When did he stop looking first for the things he needs in what the earth can give him?

If he's honest, probably around the time that his father left or died or disappeared.

 _Remember who you are_  were his mother's last words to him, but he's forgotten. If he's honest with himself, he's let the lack of her become an excuse, a bandage for his own poor decisions.

He has not been the man that either of his parents wanted. He was not the son that either of them expected, and he's continued to fail them in their deaths as he did in life.)

The sky is starting to brighten. Caleb knows exactly where he is, knows how to get back to camp from here. What's the point, though, if he can't make it in a day? If the transformation rips through him and sends him back into a frenzy? 

"Keep me safe," he begs to the trees. Overhead, a crow caws at him in consternation, and the idea is so farfetched that he sobs all the harder, "I'm a Widogast. I'm one of you. Keep me safe until I can find a temple," because lycanthropy isn't something he's studied in particular, but he remembers the cure from a passage years and years ago, some medical thing he'd perused after Humphrey had been married and there'd been nothing to do but mope and read.

The crow caws at him to keep quiet, to leave her to her rest, and he prays to the Circle and the trees and any of the gods that might take pity on him, "Just help me this once, I am begging you."

His people are forest people, wood guests. They stretch back in an unbroken line as far as the trees are tall, unbroken until  _him_. The forest opens before him.

He shakes in every limb, exhausted and sick to his very bones. He walks forward. He does not look back.


	2. Werewolves and their Natural Habitats

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caleb tries to fix all the mistakes of his life in one go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uhhhhh, this kind of?? Got away from me??  
> I'm half way through the finale of this and it just was not working as one huge chapter, there needed to be a break.  
> This is! P. graphic in some spots! But if you made through chapter 1 then I guess you're cool with that!

He is hungry. The second day, he is unbearably hungry.

The forest opens before him and even in the  _other_  form, even in the  _second_  skin, it knows him for what he really is. It twists and turns him all through the night so that he can  _smell_  meat on the wind, he can  _smell_  the fires of a village, he can  _hear_ the laughter of children playing in the night, but he cannot actually reach them.

The morning of the first day he'd woken and vomited blood and flesh and cried to his mother for help. The morning of the second day, he wakes exhausted in every limb, hungrier than he has ever been in his life, and exactly on the edge of the village he needs.

Clerics, he knows, clerics to break curses, to cure disease.

( _Show me how strong you are_ , and that's Bernard in his head. Caleb has never seen or heard from his Bear again, wonders if he's still out in the world somewhere. If he's still hurting people or only himself.

Caleb had not been very strong, in the end. Maybe he never had been.)

He crawls forward, to look, to see, because that's his training. He's blood soaked and filthy and in the uniform of the Dwendalian Empire. Some assumptions can't be taken for granted: he needs to scope out the temple before anything else.

Training takes over, he's crawling forward through the underbrush, a critical eye on the crow crouching in the tree above him. "Don't," he warns, with a voice that's barely a whisper, "Don't you dare," and it clicks her beak at him before fluttering off.

A smear of black against a dawn-streaked sky. That's what she is. He has to strain to see, but she perches on the roof of a nicer building, thatched roof and open door, then loops back to him and forth, and the message is clear:  _follow_ _follow_ _follow_ _me_.

( _Dark wings,_ his mother liked to say, after his father had banished familiars from the house,  _Bring d_ _ark tidings_.

Humphrey had shivered against him.  _Sometimes_ , he'd said, back when they were kids and could say anything,  _I think your mums more crow than not._ )

It's not his mother. She went into a forest a very long ways away from here and she did not come back out. But he's only twenty-one years old and he has no family left, and the last time they'd looked into each other's eyes she'd said  _For_ _you, any_ _would do_ , and it's true for him the way it never was for her. His mother had a Forest, her heart had been tied to it as surely as his father had been to their land.

It's not his mother, but he needs all the hope he can get.

He rolls over onto his back, shucks the jacket of his uniform off and into the bushes. The shirt underneath is still clean over his shoulders and arms, it's only the front that's a red mess.

Caleb volunteered for the front. All of them are men with nothing to lose—

(He doesn't know, he can't remember, and there's panic at the thought because his memory stretches behind him as long as the trees, an unending loop of his life, but all he remembers is  _It's a fucking monster_  and  _run, go!_ and a blood curling scream on the tail end of  _stop!)_

 _—_ but his unit is comprised from killers of the highest order, men who lean into violence when they can. He tears strips out of the front of his shirt, the bloodiest bits, uses them and a few sticks to make a splint of his injured arm, still sore despite the potion, as if the curse is still seeping into it. There's nothing to do for the blood on his pants, so he rolls in the dirt a bit, tries to muddy the red into brown, and does. He's clever, he's so  _clever_ ; is he clever enough to pull this off?

He stumbles from the woods with the crow that is not his mother cawing overhead.

"Please!" he coughs, staggering from the hunger and the exhaustion, "Please, I need a healer!" and no one is coming out of the buildings and he doesn't blame them for their caution: he is a monster in men's clothing, he is everything they bar their doors against at night, "Please, I need a cleric! Don't let me die," more truth than he means to bubbles up, tears that cut tracks through the dirt and blood on his face, "Don't let me die like this."

Lycanthropy. He's never studied it, not really, but once something gets into his brain it's there forever—

(Screaming and burning and pain unlike anything he's ever known and he ripped through their bodies as he fled. He remembers the face of every person he's ever killed—every face since he joined the Army and came to war, every face but these.)

—but he knows the manner of curse that it is. He knows what it takes to be cured.

"That's close enough," and someone is striding out to meet him as he stumbles to the boundary of the village, a man with a sword in one hand and a shield in the other but without the easy confidence of a man that knows how to wield them.

Militia, rebel, some sort of village would-be-warrior, and that's fine because Caleb's shucked his uniform coat off and rolled about in the dirt five hundred yards back in the shadows of the forest, he's the furthest from military order and regulation that anyone can be.

"Please," he repeats, clutching the splint of his arm, barely keeping his own legs under him, "Please, I need a healer. I need a cleric," and he knows he's convincing. He's got fire lurking under every inch of his skin but most people never see past the lean and long and lank of him, they see how he struggles to maintain eye contact, hear the uncertainty that tinges every social interaction, and they assume.

More fool to them.

"'s wrong with you, then?" Not a blatant rejection, not an explicit threat, so it's as good as acceptance.

"Attacked," he gasps, stumbling closer, "We were attacked by a beast. Got my arm," and it's true, it's true, it's exactly what happened, "I need a blessing from the cleric. Some sort of- of monster, I need the cleric to heal it."

The man looks at him—some villager, some farming man, someone tied to their land the way his father had been, but thank all the gods that his father had never had to take up arms—lowers his shield just a bit.

"'s your name?" which is reasonable, is expected.

"Caleb," he says, tears still on his face, the salt of it mixing with the iron of blood, "Caleb Widogast."

(Did he kill them? The closest things he's had to friends, a far stretch from family. He remembers the face of every person he's ever killed but these.

Where is his unit?)

The man sheathes his sword, extends a hand to shake and then to sling Caleb's arm around his shoulders, "Jost," he says, "Call me Jost." Jost helps him limp toward the temple, the crow perching on top a cawing cacophony, swooping and diving around the entrance, and Caleb shakes his head because how could he ever have thought that this simple creature was his mother?

His mother is a tree in a forest very far away. He would know, he's sure, which one that she is. If he saw it—but he won't see it. How stupid, how selfish, how smug is he to think that his mother would come just because he asked her to?

The crow swoops and dives in the doorway, lands on the threshold and squawks. "Hush," he tells it, "Go, pretty bird, go away."

There's nothing in its eyes of his mother's blue-gray, of his. There's nothing of her auburn hair cascading in gentle waves, nothing of her night blossoms or day lilies. She peers at him with plain, beady black eyes and he murmurs in what's left of his voice, "Thank you. Go free."

Jost edges them around the bird and opens the door. Hauls Caleb in because he wouldn't make it on his own two feet. Dumps Caleb the ground after just a few feet and calls, "He's here," as he walks back to the door, says over his shoulder as he exits, "Just like you said."

There's a raucous cawing on the other side of the door. His crow friend had tried to warn him, and she's not his mother but she'd tried.

When did he stop listening to anyone but himself?

(If he's honest, the moment he got the letter.  _Your father is gone_  she'd written, as if the why and the how were inconsequential,  _I go to the forest_  and as far he knows she'd never come out.

What is the fucking point of being a Widogast if there's no perks, if there's no benefits, if there's nothing to show for it? He's twenty-one and alone in the world. He hasn't got a friend or a family to his name, nothing but a memory that stretches back as long as the trees are tall, a chain unbroken until him.)

"Widogast," and a boot meets the back of his head, presses down until he tastes the dirt, "Figured you'd end up here," and this is the thing that will kill him, this is the thing that he cannot bear, "Nearest temple. Not hard to see the logic in it."

The boot lifts up and he's scrabbling to his hands and knees, to rise to all fours, like an animal, like the monster he is because where is his unit? The faces in his memory don't match theirs, the voices are too-loud and too-much and none of them are quite right, but he'd thought maybe that had been the werewolf. 

Where's the unit, Caleb? They're all of them killers of the highest order, men who volunteered to go to the front, and not because they get their jollies over thoughts of the Dwendalian Empire. They've listened to Jensen fuck him through his protests, heard him fakes his moans and try to get through it, and not a one of them intervened the night that Jensen slapped him. Where's the unit, Caleb, and how'd they let a fucking werewolf escape?

Webb kicks him in the ribs, Cooper brings his elbow down onto Caleb's bowed back, but Jensen grabs him by the hair and lifts him to his knees with it.

"Get the cleric," Jensen snaps, and Godfrey says, "I'll get her," walks away and Caleb's eyes flick to his peripheral, track Godfrey as the man walks off shaking his head, just barely catches his mutter of, "Didn't sign up for this shit," because Godfrey is always good for a decent drink and a better story, but Jensen and Caleb had led them. Jensen had led every charge into battle and Caleb had been at the back of every formation, and between them they'd kept this unit of fucking lunatics alive. Who volunteers for the front? Who wants to go to be the first into the fray?

They'd seen Caleb from day one wilt to Jensen's desires. They'd watched at every point of contact between them, listened to every moan Caleb had faked. They call him Widogast but they don't know the power that comes with the name. He stays in the back of the formation and keeps them safe, saves their necks all damn day long, he's due a little peace, but does he ever get it?

They're the closest thing he's got to friends. Fucking lunatics who are trying to die with a little war glory to their names, who like to hurt people and take their shit, who leave their two leaders to what men do in the darkness.

Ashdown stoops down to his other side, sneers, "You'll be happy to know you managed to slaughter the whole village. Not a man, woman, or child who could stand against ya," and those faces are a blur, those faces are missing from his memory as nothing is, "Who'd have thought ol' Widogast had it in him?"

"Shut up," he says, he pants, he gasps, "I don't feel like talking to you," because that's his little refrain, that's the response he's rehearsed to lessen the social energy he has to spend. Looks to Jensen and says, "You  _fuck_ ," because it's what he never told Bernard or Humphrey, but it's what all of them deserved to hear, "You conniving prick, you turncoat, you traitor," and what would his mother have said to this? She would have smothered Bernard in his sleep, would have let plants take root in Bernard's lungs, all because of some bruises and contusions.

He has nothing of her gift, but he's all the power of the Widogast name, which is precisely none.

"Here," Godfrey says, "I'm outta here," and a slight woman steps to Jensen's side, looking afraid but self-righteous and sure of herself, and how often has he looked that way? "I don't want no part in this," and Godfrey will pay for it later, if the others' chortles and scoffs are anything to go by, but he slips out and leaves the door open in his wake.

The crow spears in, heads to the rafters of the temple, loudly scowls at them all, and he's earned that much at least, that's the one bit of this mess that he's earned.

"I did love you," Jensen says, "You were a good man, Widogast," and the grip in his hair is tighter than Jensen would ever dare in their bed, "Tell me that you didn't know what it was when it bit you. That you weren't trying to turn against the unit, the Empire."

"Tell me this is just about that," he snaps back, because he isn't stupid, he knows Jensen doesn't really believe he'd become a fucking  _werewolf_  on purpose, "Tell me that you haven't been trying to run me off this past year," because it's gotten worse between them. It was never great but it had been good in the beginning, as the things in his life so often are.

If he's honest, which is rare when he's talking to himself, it got worse the night of his mother's letter, the night he stopped listening to anyone but himself. He's twenty-one and he's got no family, no friends, and he'd stopped caring beyond the next target they pointed him at, beyond getting through the next day. He'd thought Jensen too kind to break things off between them, to end their whatever, and if a little discomfort was the price Caleb paid for all of Jensen's warmth and calm and surety? If suffering a little was all it took to keep Jensen wrapped round him like a shield against the world?

Well, that had been nothing short of what he deserved. What he'd earned for his manipulations.

(He'd never been his father's son, he'd never had his mother's gift. Every man that has laid hands on him has found him lacking, just as his parents had.

Even in his name, he's a forest  _stranger_ , because there are no gods for his people, there's nothing but the Circle and their name, and he broke both the moment that fire sparked between his fingertips.

His mother had been the sort of wood  _guest_  that could stay awhile. His father had been tied to the land that provided for them. Caleb has been a stranger all his life, a guest everywhere he's gone.

If he'd cared, if he'd looked, if he'd insisted, he could have prevented this.)

(Isn't his biggest problem that he's never cared about himself beyond the name?)

"Tell me," and spit and snot and tears dribble in streams down his face, tracking through the blood and the dirt there, "That this isn't about us."

Jensen nods to the cleric, who sets her hands to the arm splinted against his chest. Her fingers wreathe in white light, in healing energy, and he can feel the darkness in the wound as she pulls it out.

"I loved you," Jensen says, as Caleb struggles in his grasp, "For a while. For a year, maybe more. I loved you and I'll let you die a man rather than a beast," and Caleb barely hears him over the roaring in his ears, over the howling that's caught in his throat as the wolf digs in its claws and tries to  _stay_.

"A big one," the cleric murmurs, "I can see it in him." She's a mockery of her order, a smirk paints her lips and she cuts her eyes at Jensen, at Ashdown, trying to decide between them. Clerics are given their magic from their god, should use it in a manner befitting worship, but this woman stands in front of him and smirks and makes it painful as she leeches the beast from his bones, "He likes it, I think."

Jensen's eyes stay on Caleb's face through it all. That's a mercy, at least. That's a show of respect for what they once were. Caleb screams and Jensen's hand is finally, after two years, fisted roughly in his hair as hot and heavy and hard as he's wanted, and isn't that a joke? Humphrey hid him and Bernard beat him but Jensen—who had seemed the mildest of them, the gentlest of them—Lieutenant Colonel Robert Jensen will be the one to drive a standard issue Dwendalian Empire steel blade through Caleb's chest.

"I gave everything to you," and he doesn't know it's not true until he says it. Jensen still doesn't even know that his family is dead. Two years and Jensen has no idea where Caleb came from. How could he have loved a man so much, and still been so unable to  _tell him_  anything?

Shame kept him from divulging himself, shame ate him up inside, because before the letter there'd been hope, hadn't there? Hope that he could go home a man in his own right with a lover on his arm and that his mother would weave flowers into their hair.

After the letter he'd have had to explain on his own; how'd he joined to keep his mother from killing Bernard, how he had let the whole relationship get away from him, gotten lost in the space between what he wanted and what he  _said_  he wanted, and his mother wouldn't have been there at the end to smooth things over the way Caleb never can. 

(If he's honest, which is rare, everything stopped after the letter came. He still doesn’t know where his father went or the how's and why's. He knows only that his mother went into the forest.

And what was the point of anything, after that?)

The cleric's hair is coming undone from her bun, she grins widely at Caleb and pants, "It's done," and he can sense the magic in her that ties her to a god, he can sense the bits of her it retreats to when she's not using it. He can sense her god's displeasure.

There are no gods for him. So there's no one to beg for forgiveness, for clemency, for mercy. There are no gods for the Widogasts, only Circles and forest, neither of which would have him. There's no one to judge him, no one to stop him, and he's kept a leash on himself for his entire fucking life, one of the first lessons he ever took was how to keep from burning the house down in his sleep, and that's exhausting. All he's ever wanted is for someone to take him out of his skull for a bit, to occasionally feel like he's at someone else's mercy, because he remembers every fucking moment of his life and that would wear on any man but especially one with the power he bears.

"I loved you," he tells Jensen, ignores Ashdown's smirk, Cooper's and Webb's laughter, Rolfe's kick to the back of his shins. They were the closest things he had to friends—except that they weren't. They were people he could look out for because he wouldn't look out for himself. They were stand ins for the person that really needed his care. They were time sucks in which he could invest his attention. They were fucking lunatics, if he's honest.

His hands are still free because no one ever looks past the long and lean and lank of him, no one ever remembers the sort of power he bears until he's actively bearing it. Fire shoots down either arm, and they remember as they begin to scream. The splint burns away and the cleric stumbles back, but there are no gods for one such as him so there's no reason to spare her from the flames. Ashdown goes up first, because the fucking sound of his voice sends annoyance spearing through Caleb. The burst goes out further, rapid-fire down either arm, and he hardly notices that he's standing, that Jensen's hand is out of his hair, as Rolfe and Cooper and Webb all go down with apologies melting in their throats.

The cleric's hands are teeming with light but she's praying, "Please, he's a monster, please, help me," and it's not to Caleb. She's a mockery of her order and  _her_  god is displeased, but Caleb doesn't have a god or a family or a friend and he's kept himself on a tight leash for twenty-one fucking years, so he turns her to ash without a second thought.

Smoke clogs the air, black and burning in his lungs, and his little crow friend is in the rafters trying to get out as the entire building starts to catch. Thatch roof, a simple temple for a simple village, and this could have happened very differently if Jensen were a different sort of man. If Caleb would just choose more wisely.

"I loved you," Caleb says, because he would have stayed. He knows that Jensen didn't want him, that a lot of what Jensen did was an attempt to get Caleb to leave without asking, that his mother would never have approved.

(He wouldn't, he knows, he wouldn't recognize her tree.

She'd put a letter into the mail and gone into the forest without thinking twice about him, about what he needed or wanted, without even telling him what had happened. She was wild and willful and as willowy as he is, he's her spitting image in every way. She was as selfish and shallow and short-sighted, too, and he can admit now that his mother had not been the larger-than-life person he remembers.

She had been a woman, and he had loved her dearly, but they hadn't really known each other. Not in any way that counts.)

"Wido," Jensen calls him, pet names for his little pet, "Caleb," and it's still such a thrill to hear his first name on Jensen's lips, "Please, you know I had to, you were a  _werewolf_  Caleb, a menace. Even cured, it  _does_ things to people, messes with their  _heads._  I had to put you down."

Like a dog. Like an animal. Like a thing.

He's always been a monster in men's clothing, but these past two years have made him worse. The flames under his skin have always flickered, but his time in service has fanned them to new heights. Every face of every person he's ever killed slides through his head on an indefinite loop, his memory preserving each nuance of their horror in the moment that he burned them away.

Let this be the last, he thinks, and cups Jensen's face in his hands.

It's quick, because he isn't cruel. Jensen doesn't even have time to scream before it's done, before he's crumbling to ash. The temple goes up in a blaze that maybe will even appease the god it was meant to worship, who let their cleric burn.

He walks out of the village on his own two feet, shadowed by a crow that follows him only as far as the forest. "No more," he says, "I'm done with it," and the fire in his fingers lashes and rails against him.

Caleb Widogast has nothing of his parents in him. The land would provide for his father's son, but will not for him. The forest would have kept his mother's child, but he is only a guest. The fire took his family from him the first moment it sparked between his fingers.

He will not study magic again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Literally this is the headcanon backstory I use whenever I write Caleb at all, so *shrug* welcome to the nightmare! At this point I'm writing this just to get it out of my system so I can refer back to it for my Caleb characterizations and if I!! Have to suffer with these thoughts!! Then so do you guys!!  
> I promise the next chapter MOLLY ARRIVES AND EVERYTHING GETS BETTER!!


	3. Resolutions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caleb confronts himself over himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's mentioned Fjord/Wessik because that's what @LoseBetter wanted and I'm a sucker for dragonborn anyway.  
> Here it is!! The comfort part of the hurt/comfort!!

They're in the Leaky Tap when it happens. Considering how Jester goes around yelling about the Mighty Nein to anyone who listen, their relative but growing renown, he should be shocked it didn't happen sooner.

Caleb sits at their usual table, alone but comforted by the knowledge that his friends are dispersed about the room, and reads his book. It's something he's picked up from Chastity's Nook, some dreadful two copper romance that he is appalled and thrilled by in equal measures, that he most certainly should not be reading in the middle of the tavern.

"Mind if I take this seat?"

He doesn't even look up, just gestures with one hand in acquiescence, turns the page because nothing is going to take his attention from Julius and Claude finally getting a moment alone and  _especially_  since it's in the castle  _rectory_ , and Caleb is extremely, obsessively invested in finding out what sort of sinful shit they're about to get up to.

"Pardon my intrusion," and suddenly there is a hand on his knee.

Caleb is past the point in his life when easy affection sets him at ease. He is long past not tensing at every errant touch. For a moment he is so startled that he cannot actually rebuke the strange man, can only look up from his book to see what the fuck is going on.

The Mighty Nein are dispersed about the room—Fjord at the bar with Wessik, Jester playing cards as Molly tells fortunes, Nott is probably under a table somewhere stealing shit, Beau and Yasha are huddled nearer to the fire. They're dispersed about the room and Caleb is trying be sociable? He's trying to read more often in the common areas rather than staying cloistered in his room?

(They're the closest things he's got to friends, and it makes him uneasy, but there's an itch in the bones of his arm even all these years later. There are parts of him that bay and beg to be in the center of the group at all times. Nott made for an affable companion and he loves her, in his own way.

Lycanthropy changes people. He's still learning how.)

"Um," he says, staring at the man's chest, "I'm—that is," and there's a hand on his knee that he has not invited.

"I'd like," the man says, and he's a bit taller than Caleb, so his breath fans over Caleb's cheekbones as he leans in and Caleb leans back and the stranger leans  _further_ , "To take a walk with you," and his fingers curl so that his nails are digging into Caleb's kneecap. Caleb cannot look any further than the man's neck, cannot actually force his gaze any higher as every molecule of him goes frozen and focused on the hand on his knee.

"That," Caleb says in his very best  _fuck off_  deadpan, "Is very kind, and yet I am minding my own business," and he moves his knee so that the hand falls to the wayside, can still feel the weight and heat of it on him like a brand, "And I would like to continue doing that, thank you," and he returns to his book.

The years have imprinted upon him the importance of being direct, of being explicit. People will take any chance to twist things to their own likings. Julius and Claude are in the castle rectory and it's taken them more than thirty thousand written words to get there. Caleb's utmost focus is required.

(He's spent enough of his life being twisted up inside. All these years later and he still surprises himself, still doesn't know which parts of him are growing from the parts that are healing. Doesn't know if the distinction makes a difference. He doesn't spare time for strangers anymore.)

(He's a  _menace_ , he knows, the only sure thing.  _It does things to people_ , even after being cured,  _it_ _messes with their heads._ )

"I think your business," and there's no alcohol on the man's breath as he takes Caleb's shoulder this time, turns him bodily, and isn't that a quirk considering the matter at hand? "And mine," and there's something vaguely familiar here, to this voice, "Are about to intersect."

(His memory is perfect in every detail, stretching out behind on an infinite loop. That voice is familiar, but it's hard to place anything in the echo chamber of his mind without taking a minute for review. Like a single book in a library that's been disrupted, disorganize, it takes him a minute of review to find what he needs.)

 _I'm_ _outta_ _here,_ as Jensen held him up by the hair,  _I don't want any part in this_.

Caleb freezes, every molecule focused on the hand at his shoulder, every limb of him trembling with fight and flight and the flurry of emotions running through him, the fire rising up and the energy it takes to beat it back down, but he cannot actually move again. He's exhausted his one rebuke, which has had a one hundred percent success rate until now—probably aided significantly by the fact that he has spent years in shabby clothes with a filthy face and isolated in the wilderness—so there's not actually a Plan B for this situation, he's not got any spare social energy in reserve for this interaction, so he freezes.

And then he  _looks_  at the person that's touching him.

"Oh," he says, and the man frowns at him, "Yeah," and Caleb says, "I guess you want to—" and the man says, "Well, yeah, outside? Unless you'd prefer," and Caleb is already shutting his book, slipping it into one of his many pockets, is rising from his seat and saying, "No, outside is—well, I suppose that this won't take long," and Godfrey's eyes are not a bright as they once were, not nearly as twinkling with all of his stories, but he nods and says, "Just a moment, I figure."

" _Ja_ ," Caleb says, "Just a moment," and he and Godfrey slip out of the tavern and into the night.

***

Caleb is not as sneaky as he could be.

There'd been a time when entering a room unnoticed wasn't a skill but a way of life. He'd blended into the shadows and crept from room to room on the balls of his feet, holding his breath, praying to gods that wouldn't listen that he would not wake the man in the other room.

(Which? There's a cast of them, of faces and voices and hands. It starts with his father and there hasn't been an end to them yet.

So go on. Pick.)

He knows there's no silver thread set in his and Molly's room because the spool is in his pocket. Wouldn't matter anyway because his head is the one that rings with alarm when the thread is broken. And he could say that the thought makes him incautious, that the knowledge that everyone should be in bed—except for Fjord, who is waiting for Wessik to get off work and seems oblivious to the existence of anyone other than the white scaled dragonborn—emboldens him over much, but that wouldn't be fair.

The truth is that he's angry, to the point that it's hard to care. He creeps up the stairs like a ghost, like a cat ( _like a wolf, he knows, he_ _fears_ ) and into the room he shares with Molly, does not pause to listen at anyone else's door though the bones in him dig in their claws and push him to ( _it changes people_  he knows,  _please, he's a monster, please help me_ but gods don't care anymore than the trees do.) He opens the door of his room, mindful of the hinges and not letting them creak, closes it behind him.

No lamplight. Frumpkin stands on the desk, both his front paws against the window, but he turns to Caleb and gives a quiet  _mrrp_  to see him. He strides to the desk and undresses for bed; quickly, efficiently, draping his clothes over the spare cahir, goes to the place in his head where he can be alone with his thoughts and goes through the motions.

 _I'm_ _outta_ _here_  Godfrey had said,  _I don't want no part in this_. He remembers the exact frown Godfrey had worn, the exact cadence of his voice, because there's nothing in his memory that isn't detail-perfect but this he'd remember no matter what.

Molly lays in the bed. He hears the tiefling's tail thumping against the mattress, knows just from the cadence of that Molly is awake and waiting but patiently so.

"An old friend," he says into the darkness of the room, "That's all."

Caleb does not have dark vision, so he can only see the vague outline of a body, but the piercings in Molly's horn glint even when there's no light for them to catch. He can just make out how Molly sits up in the bed, elbows on his knees, can guess at the smile that paints his lover's face.

"About what I expected," and Molly's voice isn't sleep-tinged, he's been waiting just as Caleb thought, "Frumpkin was watching, to be sure," and his cat brushes against him, headbutts whatever parts of Caleb he can get too, slips off to curl up for the night.

"What would you think," and he swallows. It's hard, he loves Molly but it's still  _hard_ , "If I told you I had lycanthropy?"

It's changed him, he knows. It's not as easy to be alone as it once had been. Having Nott tucked under his arm has been—better. Not only because they'd made more money as a pair, but because there's safety in numbers. In pack.

( _For you_  his mother had said,  _any would do_ , and she had not been talking about lovers or armies or their tiny little village.

There had been a crow in the forest the day he woke up a monster, though his familiar prefers a cat form.

He still has never seen his mother's tree. He doesn't think there is one.)

"Would you," and he knows what he  _wants_  to hear but that's not the same as  _hearing_  it, "Would you turn me in? Would you kill me?"

There are chains draped in Molly's horns, linking them to his ears in an elaborate display of aggrandizement, an experiment in distractions. Caleb likes to link his fingers between them when Molly's asleep, he likes the cool slip of the metal between his fingers.

They make tinkling little notes of music when Molly tilts his head. "Caleb," he says, "My heart, what's happened?"

The door a room over thumps open and closed. Furniture scraps against the hardwood floors as two large bodies bump into everything in their path, and Wessik's voice is not as quiet as the dragonborn probably thinks he is when his deep laugh rumbles through the otherwise peaceful inn. The walls are thin and it's not Wessik's fault nor Fjord's, but Caleb's face burns in the darkness of the room.

"He wanted to apologize," and he should explain, there's a lot of backstory to cover, but he's  _shaking_  in his anger, "He left me there without knowing what they'd do. He left me there to die and he saw the Mighty Nein today and recognized me. He wanted to apologize," because he's shaking in anger and Molly is  _so_ _good_ at getting him out of his skull, at setting his problems to a manageable distance.

Caleb is pale and thin and needs to shave. What did he ever think he had to offer someone like Molly? Is he so smug, so selfish, so stupid that he still hasn’t learned this lesson?

He crosses the room on feet that, even in his anger, even half a continent and years away in his head, pad softly on the wooden floor. There's a cast of faces in his head that taught him how to be quiet, how to sneak from room to room in the dead of the night until it became second nature, who taught him that it's best to pick his fights and better to not fight at all.

(The year his father had realized that Caleb was a Widogast was a rough one.

What more is there to say?)

The sheets of the bed feel rough against his skin; he's hyperaware of every inch of himself, even the slide of Molly's skin against his is too much as he sits on the side of the bed and leans in. Molly's arms go around his shoulders on instinct, and Caleb mutters against his lips: "Fuck me. Hard," and closes the gap between them.

Ravenous. He's ravenous for his favorite tiefling, for his only lover, for Mollymauk Tealeaf. He pulls Molly's bottom lip into his mouth and tugs at it with his teeth,  _closer_ _closer_ _more_ _more_ _more_  until Molly slides his tongue against Caleb's, shifting so they're knee-to-knee, cupping Caleb's face and giving as good as he gets. Caleb reaches up, mindful of the chains, and grips Molly's horns, uses them as leverage to get Molly above him, to keep Molly pressed against him as Caleb leans back, lets Molly swallow his begging, "Hard, Molly, hard, I need you to—" Save him? Help him? "Hurt me," he finishes because it's true.

The change is instant.

Molly angles away, Caleb's pale face still framed by lavender hands, says, "Caleb," and it's easier to look Molly in the eye than anyone else, something about the solid expanse of crimson that's better, "My heart, what's happened?"

The laughter next door has become something decidedly more guttural.

"You like to," he insists, because it's true, because he needs it, "I want you to, Molly, please," and his voice is nowhere near convincing, even to his own ears.

(The line between pain and pleasure has always been blurry for him, and the way that Molly walks it is acrobatic, is an art form.)

His fingers tighten around Molly's horns the way Caleb knows he likes, slips his thumbs to the bases of them and  _presses_  so that Molly's crimson eyes go all fluttery and dazed, presses their chests together and says, "Molly, Molly  _please_ ," begs, "Hurt me Molly, I  _want_  it," because—

(It's what he expects, and they've been together a while without a misstep, without Molly ever ignoring his no, without Molly ever fucking up, and it's  _hard_ on him to always be ready for it. If it's going to happen anyway, he wants it to happen on  _his_  terms.)

"Caleb," Molly purrs, eyes shut and tail a vague blur of motion in the darkness, "Caleb, just stop for a minute love, just tell me what's going on," and can't anything just  _work out_  for once?

"It's as I thought then," and his voice is more hurt than anger, because he's expected this but it's still  _hard_. Knowing what he wants to hear and  _hearing_  it are different things. "I can, I can just go, I suppose—"

Molly's hands drop from his face to his shoulders, and their chests are already pressed together and the arms that wrap around him are as hot and tight as iron, and he's  _done_  this before, he's  _been_ this before, and yet? "You," Molly says, and Caleb has not heard this tone in a very long time, not since he last was on death's door, "Are talking out of your ass."

Well, that's a fair assessment if there ever was one. But where does he even start?

"They tried to kill me," he says, "My unit. I was—I had,"  _lycanthropy_ , one of the unforgivable curses, one of the darkest because it changes people, it messes with their heads, "Jensen used it as an excuse," and the arms around him are as hot and tight as iron, as armor, "I, gods Molly, I burned them all. They were my unit, my friends," or the closest he'd ever got, and isn't that just pathetic?

"Caleb," Molly says, and his voice is  _murderous_ , the tiefling is one second away from slipping into Infernal, " _A_ _cushla_ ," Molly says, one hand sliding down Caleb's back to clutch at his hips, to slide them closer together.

The sounds from next door are  _decidedly_  not laughter, a good deal more guttural than is conversationally appropriate. Fjord tends to linger around the bar, and Caleb could have guessed at the half-orc's intentions if he looked any further than the tip of his own nose, but now his face burns in the darkness of the room because they could be rivaling Fjord and Wessik right now if Molly weren't  _being_  like this.

"They're dead," he says before he can lose his nerve, because his mouth is pressed against Moll's neck, because he owes it to this wonderful man that he loves, "My parents died a long time ago," and he never told  _any_ one, he only ever mourned them in his head.

(The year his father had realized that Caleb was a Widogast was a rough one.

But he remembers every moment of his life, and he remembers them all as rough, all as barely getting by. He'd been a hidden lover and then a beaten one, he'd had a wolf ripped out of his soul, he'd burned his lover and friends to ash, he'd gone to prison and under the water, ever year is rough, every year is rougher.)

(He'd been an unwanted son, and somehow that one hurts the most.)

Molly presses their hips together, presses the back of Caleb's head so that he's staring into the sun-and-moon of Molly's shoulder. Molly holds him like armor, like he's keeping Caleb together, and the sentiment is nice, but.

He is what he is. He knows that this thing between them can't last, that Molly will turn on him as every man in his life has, but at least it will be on  _his_  terms this time.

"Caleb," Molly says and Caleb pushes away, snaps, "Think of something else to say," because he's angry and he almost never gets to be, almost never lets it happen.

Fangs in the darkness that glint in counterpoint to the gold in his horns. If there were a bell on Molly's tail they could sing Winter's Crest carols with it for all the flailing that's occurring.

"I will never," and Caleb gives his hardest stare, all ice-and-sea, but Molly's fangs flash in the darkness as he says, "I will  _never_  touch you when I'm angry. Or when  _you_ _'re_  angry," and sits on his heels as if the distance between them strengthens his point, "That's not,  _seven hells_  Caleb, that's not  _healthy_."

He blinks.

( _You okay? Got pretty rough there at the end_. He hadn't been able to talk without coughing for a full day.

 _Damnit Caleb, why didn't you say something?_ He'd tried to do exactly that, multiple times, in every way short of magic.

 _Don't I always make it good for you?_  No. Not always, not even most of the time.)

"That," he says, and hears the uncertainty just as plainly as he feels it, "That's ridiculous."

"That's how it should be," and Molly doesn't flinch when the far wall begins to rhythmically thump, doesn't bat an eye at the low and twin roars emanating from next door. "Caleb, when I," and Molly is almost  _never_  at a loss for words, but he seems well and truly stumped as he taps a finger against his own lips, "The things we do for each other, it's because the line is blurred isn't it?"

(Caleb has never once had this conversation. His face burns in the darkness of the room, but it's not because of the headboard battering against their shared wall.)

"The line between pleasure and pain. It's blurred, and that's, I mean hell Caleb, that's ideal for me. For the things I like," because Molly  _does_  bruise him, but so far it's  _only_  ever been in the ways that Caleb likes. In the ways that he finds later or feels under his clothes, like love letters pressed into his skin, "It's not, it will  _never_  be in anger."

Such an easy thing to promise. Did Humphrey ever mean to hurt him? Ever wake in the morning and think,  _oh, let me just string my childhood mate along in the shadows for years and years_? Had Bernard ever wondered to himself,  _Hm_ _, when's the last time I fucked my boyfriend to injury? Isn't he due for a light wounding?_

(Jensen alone had wanted to hurt him. Regardless of Godfrey's excuses and apologies, of the words that had melted on Jensen's tongue, he'd  _wanted_  to hurt Caleb in the end.)

"I don't believe you," Caleb says, but he says it with misery, says it because it's true, says it and rocks back onto his heels, mirror image, "I don't know if I can ever believe it. I do not know if I will ever stop waiting for you to change your mind," and isn't that awful? Isn't that a hell of a way to repay this wonderful man that has  _loved_ him?

But Molly—does not look stricken. Does not look disappointed. Doesn't even look challenged or intrigued. Molly tilts his head, the chains in his horns tinkling little notes of music, says, "Do you want me to show you?" He stretches out on the bed, hands first, arches his back like a very purple, very naked cat, complete with a little shake of his ass, tilts his head to make music and asks, "Do you want me to show you, my love? My pulse? My  _acushla_ _?"_

There's the sound of wood cracking next door. Whether they're fucking or fighting—and he knows which is the more likely if the _noise_ is anything to go by—Fjord and Wessik are dangerously close to breaking their bedframe.

"I—" and he's old enough to speak in complete sentences, he is too old to be stuttering over something like this, "I—um, that is," and his face is burning in the darkness but it has nothing to do with anger.

Molly puts one hand in front of the other and  _crawls_. Caleb falls back, partly from shock, and it gives Molly the precise opening that he needs. Lovely, lavender hands slide up his knees, up the backs of his thighs, trace upwards to Caleb's too-skinny stomach with phantom fingers. 

"Tell me, love," and it's easier to look Molly in the eyes than anyone else, something about the solid expanse of crimson that's better, "Tell me what you need,  _a_ _chroi_ ," and sets his chin on Caleb's inner thigh, his tail making lazy arcs in the air behind him that almost catch Caleb's eye.

Molly will be the fourth boy to hurt Caleb, he knows.

But maybe this time it'll be the way that he likes.

"You," he rasps, "You, Molly, all of you," and whatever else he could have said, whatever else he could have thought, goes right out of his fucking head when Molly's lips part on the head of his cock.

 _Oh_ , he thinks as Molly's cheeks hollow, as he coaxes Caleb's flesh to full and unwavering attention,  _oh_ , and it's happy and startled as Molly wraps his thumb and forefinger around the skin at the base of his ball sack and tugs.

(The wolf changed him, he knows, but it's hard to say how much with all that had happened in so short a space of time.

Why is he the way that he is? Maybe it's because he was an unwanted son with a name that would have held meaning for anyone else. Maybe it's because he has chosen the same man in separate skins for most of his life, that with all of his reading and knowledge and memory he cannot stop making the same mistakes. Maybe it was fighting in a war that he hadn't cared about, had used the fighting and fucking as a distraction from the rest. Maybe it's that he woke in a forest covered in blood, puking flesh and strips of cloth, with only the barest blur of the previous night.

Maybe it was the wolf. Maybe it's just who he is.)

He groans into the darkness and Molly hums his own pleasure, canting his hips into the bed in time with his tongue on Caleb's cock. The noise travels directly up his spine, has every hair on end, has every molecule vibrating and focused on the way that Molly is  _so careful_  of his fangs, on the way that Molly cups his balls in the palm of his hand with a gentle grip that has heat pooling in his gut.

"Mollymauk," he says, he groans, he prays, "Molly come here," and there are no gods for Widogasts, but there is a tiefling for him.

There's no light in the room, there's barely a moon tonight, but he can still see the glinting of the gold in Molly's horns, still can discern the amusement flitting through those crimson eyes—

(His childhood home had bare floors instead of wood. His mother had made them blossom and bloom, had made them moss carpets more often than not, but sometimes? Sometimes his mother had made gardens with just the flourish of her fingers, had made him night blossoms in the privacy of his room just because he liked them. She'd been wild and willful and lovely and her favorite flowers had been of her own design, had been a cacophony of reds and oranges and yellows that marks his every memory of her.

That's what he thinks of, that's why he looks Molly in the eyes.)

—as Molly pulls off with a  _pop_  and licks his lips as though he wants more.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," and this is his favorite Mollymauk voice, this is wild and willful and lovely and  _his_ , "But I believe you learned a spell for this?"

"I," he stutters, stammers, he stumbles over his words because his cock is weeping all over his thighs and he knows exactly what Molly is asking for, "I, that is," and his face is burning in the darkness but it has nothing to do with the twinning roars and the cracking wood of the bed next door. He raises one hand, reaches for Molly's cock, and Molly gently corrects him with nothing more than a tilt of his head. His face is burning, but he takes his own cock in hand, murmurs the necessary words.

Oil slicks from his palm. He thrusts into his own fist once, twice, thrice, maintains eye contact with Molly because he wants to do this well, he wants to see whatever it is that Molly wants to show him—though he is starting to suspect that he knows.

"Caleb," Molly says and he lets his spell dissipate, lets his hand fall to the side as Molly  _crawls_  up the length of his body and that should be—well, it's certainly got  _some_ thing to do with why he's blushing into the darkness, why he's flushed from the tips of his ears to the center of his chest. "Caleb," Molly says, kneeling over him, "Sit up, dearest,  _a_ _chroi_ , come here," and Caleb rises to his elbows, ever obedient, ever the good little soldier as Molly wraps his acrobatic legs—wasted, he'd been wasted in the Carnival—around Caleb's waist and sinks onto his cock. The lube that Caleb summoned does just the trick, and Molly sinks to the hilt with nothing more than a sigh, cradles Caleb's pale face in his lovely lavender hands and says, "Come here, my heart."

He crosses his ankles just above the base of Molly's tail. The angle is—the  _position_ is—every inch of them is pressed flush against each other, the salt and sweat of their bodies mixing together, and Caleb groans directly down Molly's throat when the tiefling licks into his mouth.

There's no space between them, so there's no thrusting to be done. He rocks them back-and-forth, rolls his hips to the beat of his heart which is not pounding in his chest, which is not rabbiting out of him, and the  _oh_ on his lips is happy and startled and appreciatively met. Molly swallows his  _oh,_  slides the blunted edge of his nails down Caleb's shoulders for the trouble, brings them up to scrape against the auburn scruff at Caleb's face, takes his chin in hand and pulls back only so far that their lips brush when he says, "You're mine, Caleb Widogast," and he's belonged to other people before, that's not the lesson, that's not what Molly has been trying to show him, "And I am yours my heart, my pulse," and the cant of his hips, the gentle rocking of their bodies together, the glide of their skin where their sweat has melted away the friction?

There's a tremendous crash a room over as Fjord and Wessik break their bed. If anything, the half-orc and the dragonborn seem encouraged by it—there is no pause in the clattering of their headboard until it presumably falls over too. Even then, he hears Fjord bellow and then another clamoring that shakes the walls, and it seems his friend's festivities are far from over.

"I love you," he says, as he has countless times before. His cock is buried in Molly's ass, his every word is spoken directly onto Molly's lips, and there is heat pooling in him that would very much like to be  _out_ , but somehow he has learned the exact lesson Molly intended, "I love you, Molly,  _mein_ _Süßer_ ," and they've done more in their time together than gently rock their way to an orgasm, he's told Molly that he loves him countless times, but this is the time he  _gets_  it.

"What do you—" and Molly, too, is short on words. His silver-purple hair sticks to his face; Caleb smooths it away and presses his hands to Molly's shoulders, holds him so that even the gentle rocking motion of their bodies become nothing more than a  _grind_ , hot and heavy and hard in all the ways he likes, and if Molly had pupils they would be  _crossed_  right now as he pants and  _squirms_  in Caleb's grasp, "What do you  _want_ , Caleb," because it's Molly's favorite question and somehow Caleb has never realized how  _important_  that is, how much it means to be given any say. How had he ever accepted anything less?

Molly grinds down onto his cock, exquisitely tight, impossibly warm—between his natural tiefling heat and the fire under Caleb's skin, they are almost certainly going to burn the inn down—and Caleb feels the lovely lavender dick between them dripping at the tip, twitching against the planes of Caleb's chest, and he leans in harder because he knows that the touch is just short of too-much, just this side of underwhelming, and that Molly will love it.

"You," he says, because it's true, "You, Molly, all of you," and the exact moment that he reaches his pleasure, that his vision explodes into stars and night blossoms and the crimson of Molly's eyes, is the exact moment that Molly paints his chest and chin in thick white ropes, is the moment that he whispers, "I love you," because he  _gets_ it now.

(Molly will never lay a finger on him in anger. Molly will bruise him, will wrap hands around his throat, will bring him within an inch of his life because that's what they life, that's what they need sometimes. But Molly will never raise his hand and grin when Caleb flinches. Molly will never proceed against Caleb's protests. Molly will fuck him slow and soft and sweet when he needs to forget how cruel the world has been.

Molly will be here for him. Caleb is a former fugitive and a former lycanthrope and a former soldier and he never really  _was_  a Widogast, and Molly has chosen to stand by him through it all.)

(His mother would have bloomed blossoms the size of his head for them. Blossoms of beautiful crimson, not because of the eyes they'd match, but because that's who his mother was.

Wild and willful and lovely. Just like her son.)

Molly works his cock through it all, greedy and aggrandizing, drains Caleb just as thoroughly as he's filled, until Caleb is a whimpering puddle atop the sheets, until he forgets which way is up.

His memory is detail-perfect, it stretches behind him for as long as the trees are tall.

Still, forgive a man for whiting out.

When he comes to it's because the door is cracked and Fjord's voice is floating in: "Shoulda been prepared," his friend is rumbling, "I expect better o' you, Molly."

Molly's reply is too soft to hear, but "bed" and "breaking" and "dick" quirk the corners of Caleb's mouth because he can guess at the rest.

Fjord chortles, almost chokes trying to quiet his own laughter, says, "Atta boy, Molly," as the door snicks shut.

Molly bears a wet rag and a dry one. Makes short work of the cum painting Caleb's chest, mutters something derisive and dear when he has to struggle to coax it from the scruff at Caleb's throat and chin. Caleb basks in own headspace, floats somewhere just outside of his body and smiles because he's happy and he can.

They still have to talk. He's not so smug, not so selish or stupid as to think that Molly won't get the rest of the story from him. And maybe it'll be good for someone to know, for someone to shoulder the burden with him. The Mighty Nein are the closest thing he's got to family, and that's—that's more than he knows what to do with. That's more than he's ever had.

But Molly slips into bed with him, tucks them both under the covers, kisses Caleb's forehead in goodnight and he knows:

It's worth it to try.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I started this it was just meant to be that last smutty bit, but then I was like OOOH I CAN TALK ABOUT MY HEAD CANON FOR CALEB A LITTLE BIT and then it just took over and ran off into the night???  
> Shout out to @DistractedKat who encouraged me to write the thing I wanted, not the thing I felt like I should.  
> Call out post to my goddamn self for putting me through this.


	4. Author's Note

I don't even know how many people are going to read this, but I needed to go ahead and get it off my chest.

When I wrote this, it honestly was as a reaction to several pieces of fic that I had read that depicted a widomauk that I  _was not comfortable with_. A widomauk that was shown to be very abusive and emotionally manipulative, but which was smoothed over as Okay because Molly and Caleb loved each other. As a domestic abuse survivor, the idea that something like dubious consent or under negotiated kinks could be portrayed as sexy and okay made me very... squigged, I guess.

However, I'm not the type of person to bring a problem to the table without also bringing a solution. So I challenged myself to write something that turned those aspects on their heads and portray them as rightfully abusive. So we have Humphrey, who  _doesn't mean_ to hurt Caleb, but does, and even though they're kids it's very much  _not okay_. And we have Bernard, who Caleb  _asks_ to be rough with, who Caleb  _wants_ to be hurt by to a certain extent, and who  _passes_ that extent under the guise of "can't wait, need you now" which is so, so commonly seen in fan works. And then we have Jensen, who  _coerces Caleb into giving his consent_ which is!! Very not okay!!

So I wrote these characters and I made sure to make them clearly Bad Guys, made sure to make them Undesirable, made sure that when Molly finally gets his chance to comfort Caleb it's through guiding him into something soft and sweet and  _good_ to contrast against this backdrop of abuse but with a clear message of "I'm still sometimes gonna choke you when we fuck because we're both into that and that's okay," because that's what sex is? It's a conversation between two enthusiastically consenting adults?

In any case, I'm writing this author's note because I have this fear that people will read this and think- if I've done my job very badly here- that I'm glorifying abuse in some way or using this queer character as a just a victim of his circumstances. This story is also my headcanon for how I write and portray Caleb in all of my fics, no matter the ship I'm writing for, so it was important to me to show that Caleb hates himself but that he's still incredibly intelligent and witty and has a wonderful sense of self-preservation and much is a  _survivor_ that can more-than fend for himself. Above all, I would hate for anyone to read this and dismiss it as another woobification of a gay man, as so many gay male characters fall prey to across fandom as a whole.

I guess in short I'm saying that if you read this fic and what you got out of it was "Caleb hurts so good!" then you probably didn't need to be here and/or I didn't write it well. If you read this fic and you thought "whoa, that really challenges the way I think about some common themes in the smut content I consume, maybe I should think more critically about how I view this type of content" then congrats!! You are the reader I was trying to reach!"

Ultimately, this work might not stay up. I've been lucky enough that the reception of it has been great and the comments and messages I've gotten from people saying that it was cathartic for them or that it helped them realize things about themselves/past relationships has been honestly overwhelming beautiful. I think for any author to hear that a work has impacted someone so deeply is the highest honor. But I continue to worry and to fear that it will inspire people to continue writing the abusive bullshit to which I've grown accustomed to seeing, and it makes me feel deeply conflicted that I could be complicit in the continued harm and dehumanization, even fictionally, of gay and queer men.

IN CONCLUSION, love and protect gay and queer men, love and protect yourself, be critical in the content you consume, and don't worry! It's almost Thursday.

-catz

**Author's Note:**

> I never said that happy ending would be in chapter 1! I wrote like 6k of this in one day and just couldn't stand to look at it anymore so I'm posting it. Next chapter probably will be up tomorrow!  
> I blame the entirety of this fic on @DistractedKat who was wondering about my headcanon for Caleb's background, so if you need someone to yell at! You should yell at me because she's a good lady who didn't deserve this amount of Suffering.


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